Losing Links to imagery

[MarkBeaty]

Ok, here's the deal.

After spending 5 hours organizing the 1000+ tif files into some semblance of order. I save my MXD and exit out of ArcGIS 10. Upon reopening the MXD about half the the tifs have ! on them. Yes, I know I can "repair" the data source and it does work when I do that, but I dont have the time to spend repairing 500+ files each time I open it. The tifs have not been moved and do exist in the same places they always have been. I tried toggling on/off relative path names (to no avail) and can't think of anything else. Any suggestions (other than R-Click --> Data --> "Repair the data source") would be helpful.

Thanks,

Mark B.

Edit: I changed the order of the images Last to First and First to Last - Now most of hthe ones that used to have ! don't and some that were fine previously now have !.

[JeffreySwain]

I would consider using a mosaic dataset and then setting the drawing order with the mosaic by attribute setting or perhaps an unmanaged raster catalog.  With that number of rasters, you are asking for problems on certain systems due to memory, which you have appeared to demonstrate by showing it is the number of rasters, not the specific rasters that are an issue.

[MarkBeaty]

Unfortunately a mosaic is out of the question but I will look into the Raster Catalog idea.

Thanks
-- Mark B.

[JeffreySwain]

The mosaic dataset and unmanaged raster catalog are similar in structure (both reside in geodatabase and maintain links to source data) the only difference would be the presence of the overviews, which speed up the display of your new mosaic.  Best of luck with the raster catalog, be advised that you may have to alter the display properties to get all of your rasters to display.

[MarkBeaty]

Update: Well I tried the unmanaged image catalog and it reduced the amount of lost links down to about 1/4 of the images.

Does anyone else have a suggestion?

thanks

-- Mark B.

[JeffreySwain]

I would consider upgrading your computer/video card. The unmanaged raster catalog maintains the links, so unless the network path is being altered after you create the mxd, which is highly unlikely.  It appears that during the load of the mxd, your computer makes the decision of what to display each time due to available memory.  Have you run the tool here to see if your system meets the minimum requirements?

[LaurentPondevie]

Have you tried selecting the Store relative pathnames to data sources option from File menu > Map Document Properties

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18960[/ATTACH]

[T__WayneWhitley]

Just a suggestion, but have you tried an old fashioned image catalog?  Image tiles are accessed as needed based on extent, I think the default is 9 tiles at a time but you can override that with layer properties...
It's a table with the fields:
IMAGE, XMIN, YMIN, XMAX, YMAX

IMAGE is the pathname, the rest is self-explanatory.  I usually use this either for archived photos or as a quick temporary arrangement displaying new photos I haven't put into permanent storage or processed a mosaic for yet.  It's fast and easy to generate with a script.

[MarkBeaty]

Thank you all for the suggestions, after reading through the responses I realize y'all are assuming that I'm actually trying to view all the images simultaneously.  I suppose that is my fault for not providing more details.  While the MXD in question has just over 1000 tif files within it I'm not crazy, or patient enough to try and view all of them at once.  I have the MXD set such that no imagery is loaded upon opening the MXD meaning no check-marks to the left of the image in the TOC.  As for the upgrading the video card - One, it's not my computer to upgrade; two, it should be more than enough - its an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500 w/ 586Mb RAM.  (I ran the test you suggested with and passed with flying colours).

PS. As far as using the Store Relative Pathnames option -- its happening whether they are relative or not.